Cincinnati - AAUP
September 29th, 2014
John T. McNay, a professor of history at UC-Blue Ash, is president of the Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors.
We appreciate the column by David Hodge, president of Miami University, and Santa Ono, president of the University in Cincinnati, in the Aug. 29 Enquirer. They touted results from a poll commissioned by the Inter-University Council (IUC), and we are equally encouraged that Ohio voters so strongly support higher education and funding it. We agree with Hodge and Ono that higher education is critical for the future prosperity of Ohio. However, their editorial stopped short of how to address the most pressing problems Ohio's public higher education system faces.
We applaud the efficiencies that Hodge and Ono mentioned because there is work to be done. In a U.S. Department of Education survey released recently, Miami ranked as the most expensive public university in the nation when student aid is included. Ohio State took ninth place and UC was 16th. We cannot ignore the fact that administrative bloat – the huge growth in the number of administrators and their salaries – is one of the key drivers of college costs.